Introduction

Summary

In a decree dated October 2, 1978, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Italy awarded Ada Prospero Marchesini Gobetti the Silver Medal for Military Valor, citing her participation in the Italian Resistance, or Resistenza, with the following words:

A partisan fighter, she was among the first women who, on September 8, 1943, organized the armed struggle against the enemy. Aware of the danger to which she exposed herself, she made her house a meeting-place and vital center of clandestine activity for all the partisans in the area.

Sent to France on a delicate mission to the Allied command, she did not hesitate to face a treacherous crossing of the Alps at an elevation of more than three thousand meters that lasted for more than three days.

She succeeded, with her rare skill for climbing the Alps and disregard for danger … in fleeing the pursuit of the enemy, and bringing to safety the documents entrusted to her….

A shining example of supreme dedication to and fervid enthusiasm for the ideals of liberty and homeland.

Upper Susa Valley, February 18–21, 1945

Ada Gobetti's dangerous mission to France, while admirable and worthy of official recognition, reveals only a small part of her role in the Resistenza and sheds little light on her contribution to the history of antifascism and resistance. While for most Italians, the word Resistenza refers specifically to the fight to liberate Italy from German occupation, a twenty-month period that began in September 1943 and ended in April 1945, Ada Gobetti's “life of resistance” demands a broader definition. Such a definition would include not only armed resistance during wartime or participation in the antifascist underground but also the fight against the obstruction of freedom, the limitation of human rights, and the restriction of knowledge imposed by a political power. Many years before the struggle for liberation from the Nazis and the Fascists began, Ada Gobetti engaged in an intellectual resistance to fascism, was active in the underground Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty, or GL) movement, and helped to found the antifascist Partito d'Azione (Action Party, or Pd'A), a political party whose members recognized her leadership qualities by asking her to represent them as vice mayor of Turin at the close of the war.